The left-leaning MSNBC was amazed when a new survey revealed that a surprisingly large percentage of Hispanics voted for Republicans in November’s midterm election.

In fact, the survey conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago divulged that nearly one in three of the 7,738 Latino voters surveyed casted their ballots for GOP candidates just over two years ago.

Democrats might have a stranglehold on the Latino vote in a number of areas across the United States – including California and New York – but more and more Hispanics are liking what politicians touting conservative agendas have to say … including President Donald Trump with his tough-on-immigration stance.

“Though Latino voters are a key part of the Democratic coalition, there is a larger bloc of reliable Republican Latinos than many think,” AP pointed out.

Journalists at MSNBC could not understand the rightward trend and how Trump’s unwavering stance against immigration and for the border wall has not hurt his popularity amongst Latinos.

“Data from November’s elections show the GOP’s position among Latinos has not weakened during the Trump administration – despite the president’s rhetoric and policy,” MSNBC tweeted Friday.

Trump converts

A Latino Trump convert who pastors an evangelical suburban church in Denver, Colorado, Pedro Gonzalez, did not let Democrats’ pressure and pro-immigration anti-border wall rhetoric sway his faith in the president and his fellow Republicans.

However, just a couple years ago when Trump was duking it out against his Democratic rival for the White House, twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Gonzalez’s opinions about the president were largely reinforced or molded by the anti-Trump news media.

“Initially repelled by Trump in 2016, he’s been heartened by the president’s steps to protect religious groups and appoint judges who oppose abortion rights,” AP reported. “More important, Gonzalez sees Trump’s presidency as part of a divine plan.”

Gonzalez has little doubt that God has blessed Trump for standing in defense of biblical principles – which Democrats and their ungodly agenda unabashedly attack on a regular basis when it comes to abortion and the LGBT agenda.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” the 55-year-old Hispanic Christian leader insisted about Trump, according to AP. “He was put there.”

Survey no fluke

The NORC poll was not the only poll in America that uncovered this rightward Latino trend – one that has been in effect for at least the last 10 years.

“Other surveys also found roughly one-third of Latinos supporting the GOP,” AP noted. “Data from the Pew Research Center and from exit polls suggests that a comparable share of about 3 in 10 Latino voters supported Trump in 2016. That tracks the share of Latinos supporting Republicans for the last decade.”

Democrats have been unable to take advantage of the anti-Trump coverage by the mainstream media, which has continually portrayed the president as a racist and enemy of minorities and immigrants.

“The stability of Republicans’ share of the Latino vote frustrates Democrats, who say actions like Trump’s family separation policy and his demonization of an immigrant caravan should drive Latinos out of the GOP,” AP explained.

One Miami-based Democratic pollster, Fernand Amandi, contends that Democrats are losing Latino voters because they simply are not investing their resources to court them at the ballot box.

The AP-commissioned poll also found that three demographic groups of Hispanic voters were more likely to vote for Republicans than other groups.

“The VoteCast data shows that – like white voters – Latinos are split by gender – 61 percent of men voted Democratic in November, while 69 percent of women did,” AP informed. “And while Republican-leaning Latinos can be found everywhere in the country, two groups stand out as especially likely to back the GOP – evangelicals and veterans.”

Latinos not completely sold out for Dems

The exit poll administered at the 2016 election showed that Clinton received considerably less than three-quarters of the vote when going up against Trump a couple years ago.

“Edison Research found that 28 percent of Latinos voted for Trump over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton,” TheBlaze noted.

In fact, the former first lady only took home about two-thirds of the vote against Trump – who she consistently tagged as a white supremacist and enemy of Latinos,’ but eight and four years earlier, former President Barack Obama did not fare much better against his Caucasian rivals for the Oval Office, the late U.S. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.).

“Clinton received 66 percent of the Latino vote in that exit polling – which was comparable to former President Barack Obama’s support among Latinos at 67 percent in 2008,” TheBlaze’s Carlos Garcia recounted. “However, it fell fall short of Latino support for Obama in his 2012 re-election campaign, when he received 71 percent.”

Even though Trump beat out Romney (27 percent of the Latino vote in 2012) by 1 percent, the president’s late Republican rival, McCain won a larger share of the Hispanic vote (31 percent) against Obama a decade ago.

Jumping back to the 2016 exit polls, it was divulged that an overwhelming majority of Hispanic voters oppose Trump when it comes to immigration.

“On immigration issues, 68 percent of Hispanic voters opposed building a wall along the entire U.S. border with Mexico – compared with 46 percent of whites and 82 percent of blacks – according to NBC News exit polls,” Pew Research announced in November 2016. “When asked about unauthorized immigrants, 78 percent of Hispanic voters said they should be offered a chance to apply for legal status, compared with 67 percent of whites and 82 percent of blacks.”

Regardless of who they support, Latino American voters continue to comprise a larger proportion of voters in the U.S., meaning that they are increasingly gaining on other groups when it comes to political sway.

“Turnout aside, a record 27.3 million of Latinos were eligible to vote in 2016 – up 4 million from four years ago – the largest increase of any racial or ethnic group,” Krogstad and Lopez added. “And the Latino electorate grew in many states since 2012 – including the battlegrounds of Arizona, Florida and Nevada.”